Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

But wait, there’s more… The multimedia extravaganza continues with a podcast we did with Planet Money that goes into a lot more detail.

And with all this high-brow financial stuff, we felt this story might need some leavening. So we brought in the Gregory Brothers of Auto-Tune the News for their take. They did a video called, “We Didn’t See It Comin’,” which is guaranteed to bring a smile.

There is also a comic that lays it out for folks who like their news in pictures.

Well, my colleague Jesse Eisinger and I finished part one of a series about the epicenter of the financial crisis — collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

Our story on the hedge fund, Magnetar Capital, called the “Magnetar Trade,” can be found at ProPublica.

We also collaborated on an episode of This American Life that will air this weekend on public radio stations across the nation. The fine folks at This American Life did their usual amazing job of storytelling. Alex Blumberg took an incredibly complex topic and turned it into a seamless narrative. It’s very good radio.

They also commissioned a song. Yes, a song about a hedge fund that helps to create CDOs. And of course, there is a video to accompany the song. All can be found on the TAL website or on Planet Money.

Secrecy World

Jake Bernstein was a senior reporter on the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) team that broke the Panama Papers story. In 2017, the project won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and was a finalist in International Reporting. Bernstein earned his first Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting in 2011 for coverage of the financial crises.
He has written for The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Mother Jones, The Guardian, ProPublica, Vice and has appeared on the BBC, NBC, CNN, PBS, and NPR.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Series

The Wall Street Money Machine Enticed by profits and bonuses, Wall Street took advantage of complicated mortgage-based instruments to reap billions, only to exacerbate the eventual crash.

The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going
The hedge fund Magnetar helped create mortgage-based securities, pushed for risky things to go inside them and then bet against the investments, resulting in billions in losses for investors and ultimately making the financial crisis worse. It’s a story of the perverse incentives and reckless behavior that characterized the last days of the boom. Read the story